This invention relates in general to contact assemblies and deals more particularly with an improved wire contact assembly of the type used in modular telecommunications connectors and with methods for taking such contact assemblies.
A typical contact assembly or contact set of the type with which the present invention is concerned is mounted within the housing of a modular telecommunications connector, as, for example, a standard RJ-45 modular telephone jack, and comprises an array of resilient gold plated solid contact wires. A dielectric plastic contact carrier strip molded onto and extending transversely of the array of tires maintains the contact wires in assembled closely spaced apart side-by-side relation to each other within the housing and more particularly during assembly of the contact set with the housing. However, the process of molding the contact carrier strip in place on the wire array requires a relatively lengthy molding machine cycle. In the past normal shrinkage associated with the carrier strip molding process often resulted in loosely retained contact wires and associated contact misalignment problems, particularly there the wire used in taking a contact assembly had a circular cross-section. This problem has been overcome by coining or otherwise deforming a portion of each of the contact wires and molding the contact carrier strip over the deformed portions of the wires. However, this solution adds an additional step to the process of producing a contact set.
Contact surfaces located on flexing portions of the contact wires and defined by the precious metal coating on the wires are usually located near the free ends of the flexing portions. These contact surfaces are often located on cantilevered portions of the wires, as, for example, in a modular telephone jack of the aforementioned type as is well known in the art. Although the plated contact surfaces comprise only a small percentage of the total surface area of the plated wires the relatively high cost of the gold or other precious metal plating on the wires represents a substantially by large percentage of the overall cost of producing a modular connector.
Accordingly, it is the general aim of the invention to provide an improved contact assembly and method of contact assembly manufacture wherein the quantity of precious metal required to make a contact set is substantially reduced without sacrificing the quality or integrity of the connector in which the contact set is used. A further aim of the invention is to provide an improved contact assembly which includes a contact carrier strip which enables improved wire retention. Yet another aim of the invention is to provide an improved method for attaching a contact carrier strip to an array of contact wires to further reduce the cost of making a contact assembly.